Leaving Words to Remember: Greek Mourning and the Advent of Literacy (Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava Supplementum) (Mnemosyne Supplements)

217 Pages·2001·11.56 MB·English

by  Katharine Derderian

LEAVING WORDS TO REMEMBER
MNEMOSYNE
BIBLIOTHECA CLASSIGA BATAVA
COLLEGERUNT
H. PINKSTER • H.W. PLEKET
C.J. RUIJGH • D.M. SCHENKEVELD • PH. SCHRIJVERS
BIBLIOTHECAE FASCICULOS EDENDOS CURAVLT
C.J. RUIJGH, KLASSIEK SEMINARIUM, OUDE TURFMARKT 129, AMSTERDAM
SUPPLEMENTUM DUCENTESIMUM NONUM
KATHARINE DERDERIAN
LEAVING WORDS TO REMEMBER
LEAVING WORDS TO REMEMBER
GREEK MOURNING AND THE ADVENT
OF LITERACY
BY
KATHARINE DERDERIAN
BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON • KOLN
2001
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
[Mnemosyne / Supplementum]
Mnemosyne : bibliotheca classica Batava. Supplementum. - Leiden ;
Boston ; Koln : Brill
Fruher Schriftenreihe
Teilw. u.d.T.: Mnemosyne / Supplements
Reihc Supplementum zu: Mnemosyne
209. Derderian, Katharine: Leaving words to remember - 2001
Derderian, Katharine:
Leaving words to remember : Greek mourning and the advent of
literacy / by Katharine Derderian.-Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : Brill, 2001
(Mnemosyne : Supplementum ; 209)
ISBN 90-04-11750-4
ISSN 0169-8958
ISBN 9004117504
© Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written
permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal
use is granted by Brill provided that
the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright
Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910
Danvers 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER ONE The Unspeakable Lament: the Homeric
and the heroes 15
1 . 1 The Semantics of Homeric Lament 16
1.1.1 Mourning and the Individual:
and 17
1.1.2 The 'Spontaneous' Communicative Lament:
24
1.2 The Ritual Lament ( ) 31
1.2.1 The Performance and Structure of 35
1.2.2 The in the Heroic Milieu 40
1 .3 The Hero's Mourning: the Revenge for Patroclus
and Odysseus' 52
CHAPTER Two The Archaic Epigram and the Advent of Writing 63
2.1 Stand and Take Pity: The Epigram at the Gravesite . . . 76
2.2 Destroying his Youth: The Archaic Epigrams of
Warriors 97
2.3 The Persian War Epigrams and the Passage
to the Classical Period 102
CHAPTER THREE Case Studies
in Classical Mourning 114
3. 1 The Pindaric Threnos 117
3.2 Perspective on Thermopylae: Simonides' Epigram on
Megistias (Hdt. 7.228) 127
3.3 Sophocles' Antigone: Lament, Burial, and
Communication in the Polis 136
Vi INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER FOUR The Epitaphios Logos and Mourning
in the Athenian Polis 161
4.1 The Epitaphios as an Agnostic Genre 165
4.2 The Epitaphios and History as Praise and Paradigm ... 175
4.3 The Epitaphios as an Oral Genre 181
CHAPTER FIVE Some Conclusions 189
BIBLIOGRAPHY 195
GENERAL INDEX 203
GENERAL INDEX OF GREEK TERMS 207
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume is a revised version of my dissertation, which was submitted
to the Department of Classics at Princeton University in 1998.
I owe many thanks to my committee, Profs. Richard Martin, Josh
Ober, and Ruth Webb of Princeton University, for their encouragement
and their critical insights from near and far, as well as to Prof. Dr. Wolf-
gang Rosier of the Humboldt-Universitat Berlin, whose input also
informed the project in its initial stages. Any flaws in the text that remain
are my own.
A Mellon Dissertation Grant gave me the time and intellectual space to
dedicate to this project — my warmest thanks to the Woodrow Wilson
National Fellowship Foundation for its ongoing support.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family and especial-
ly to Norbert Sack, without whose none of this would be pos-
sible. I dedicate this book to my grandmothers, Aznive Attarian and
Mary Petryk.
This page intentionally left blank
INTRODUCTION
'Die ursprtinglichste Form, gewissermassen die Ur-Erfahrung jenes Bruchs
zwischen Gestern und Heute, in der sich die Entscheidung zwischen Ver-
schwinden und Bewahren stellt, ist der Tod... Wir sagen, dass der Tote in
der Erinnerung der Nachwelt "weiterlebt," so als handele es sich um eine
fast naturliche Fortexistenz aus eigener Kraft. In Wirklichkeit handelt es sich
aber um einen Akt der Belebung, den der Tote dem entschlossenen Willen
der Gruppe verdankt, ihn nicht dem Verschwinden preiszugeben, sondern
kraft der Erinnerung als Mitglied der Gemeinschaft festzuhalten und in die
fortschreitende Gegenwart mitzunehmen.' (Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle
Gedachtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung undpolitische Identitdt infruhen Hochkulturen 33)
Death, together with the grief, mourning, and memorialization that fol-
low it, is an essential and inevitable human event, experienced personally
in the light of individual mortality, yet also taking place within larger con-
texts of political and social belonging; it calls forth personal, collective,
and cultural responses which operate at synchronic and diachronic levels,
striving both to manage the immediate moment of death and to generate
and preserve long-term memory. With this complex communication
between individuals and groups across chronological divides, the memori-
alization and mourning of the dead is one of the most important locations
for the study of communication, and in particular the development of
written media. Responses to death can be separated into two categories;
grief represents the psychological and physiological reaction rooted in
human biology1, while mourning is a culturally defined behavior which
represents and reinforces the structure of the group and manages the pre-
carious situation of the survivors by guiding the transition from life to
death.2 This transitional process is initiatory in format3 and provides a
1 G. J. Baudy, Exkommunikation und Reintegration: Zur Genese und Kulturfunktion fruhgriechischer
Einstellungen zum Tod (Frankfurt, 1980): 129-142. The biologically rooted responses to
death in vertebrate animals are separation, grief, and anxious or aggressive excitement.
These reactions represent a fight-or-flight impulse on the part of the individual, and a pro-
tective maneuver with respect to the group, reactions that are expressed in culturally
acceptable venues of mourning and displays of aggression (funeral games, searches for a
scapegoat, self-mutilation).
2James R. Averill, 'Grief: its nature and significance,' Psychological Bulletin 70 (1968): 721-
748, R. Blauner, 'Death and Social Structure,' Psychiatry 29 (1966): 378-394.
3 Cf. A. Van Gennep's (The rites of passage (Chicago, 1977)) tripartite initiatory process of
separation from an old status, liminality, and reintegration into a new status.